Dr. Abigail Tyler (MILLA JOVOVICH) attempts to calm her patient (ENZO CLILENTI) in "The Fourth Kind", a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where--mysteriously since the 1960s--a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered.

The Fourth Kind

"The Fourth Kind" purports to contain actual footage of sorry Alaskans getting jerked around by otherworldly beings. Based on a rash of actual disappearances in Nome, Alaska, it melds an alien-invasion premise with supernatural horror, mockumentary posturing and that old bosh linking ancient mythology with alien visitors. The result is an occasionally frightening hybrid of dramatized narrative and documentary-style "archival footage." (Universal insists, a la "Blair Witch," that the clips in question are real.)

Watch the trailer for the movie "The Fourth Kind."

Media: San Francisco Chronicle

The faux verisimilitude lends a lo-fi creepiness to the proceedings, but only half the movie is scary - and it's the half that doesn't credit the actors. Seems unfair. The heroine, a psychologist named Abigail Tyler, is played by glam but bland Milla Jovovich in the narrative portions and an uncredited, stringy-haired, fabulously hollow-eyed character actress in the "documentary" portions. The plot at both levels of contrivance involves Dr. Tyler's videotaped hypnotherapy with patients who complain of sleeplessness.

They all wake in the middle of the night, they all see an owl staring through the window, and they all sense a being of some kind at the bedroom door. Then they trash Abby's office and emerge from hypnosis zombified with fright. Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi conducts these scenes with a nice, paranoid crescendo, leading up to a nightmarish 911 call and dandy levitation later on.

You have to wonder about aliens who spend night after night harassing people at their bedroom doors, only to beam through walls and ceilings on demand. Other mysteries involve a few unfortunate acting choices (Will Patton, as Nome's nasty sheriff, mimics George W. Bush) and Osunsanmi's annoying reliance on fancy camera angles.

The film's narrative segments are far too glossy and stylized, larded with ponderous scoring, obvious melodrama and split-screen visuals that offset the "re-enactments" with the "real." Meant to heighten terror, the effect only saps it; Osunsanmi would have been better off shooting the whole thing with bogus video and audio, much like "Paranormal Activity." As it stands, "The Fourth Kind" boasts a creepy kind of joke - and a confusing kind of horror.